Faculty
Dr. Pedro Rosa Neto, M.D, Ph.D, Neurology
Director of the TNL, Assistant professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery and Psychiatry at McGill University, affiliated with the Douglas Research Centre
Dr. Rosa-Neto is a clinical neurologist with expertise in quantification of brain functions using imaging techniques, in particular, Positron Emission Tomography (PET). His research interests focus on imaging biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases. He directs the TNL for translational and integrative neuroimaging.
For more info: google scholar, loop, research gate, researcher id, LinkedIn, resume
Dr. Serge Gauthier, M.D, FRCPC, Neurology
Professor, Departments of Neurology & Neurosurgery, Psychiatry, Medicine; Associate Member School of Physical & Occupational Therapy, Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, McGill University.
Professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery, Psychiatry and Medicine at McGill University; Associate Member of Physical & Occupational Therapy and Pharmacology & Therapeutics at McGill UniversityDr. Gauthier’s research interests include etiology and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other related diagnoses, development of consensus guidelines on approval and use of anti-dementia drugs, and rights of individuals with dementia in research studies’ participation.
Postdoctoral Research Fellows
Mira Chamoun, Ph.D.
Mira has a PhD in vision neurosciences and psychophysics from the Université de Montréal. She started as a postdoctoral fellow at the MCSA in June 2017. Mira will be working on projects axed on the studying of physical and biological markers associated with normal healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
Emilie Thomas, Ph.D.
Émilie joined the MCSA team in January 2018. She is a postdoctoral researcher and also a neuropsychologist. Since her doctoral studies, she is interested in normal and pathological memory. At MCSA, Émilie is currently working on a research project developed by Dr. Pedro Rosa-Neto’s team on the progression of neuroinflammation and Tau aggregates in screening for preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. She is particularly interested in measurements of cognitive functions in relation to markers of neuroinflammation and in relation to biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Muhammad Naveed Iqbal Qureshi, Ph.D.
Naveed joined the MCSA as a postdoctoral research fellow in June 2018. He is developing the methods to integrate the cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning with clinical neurological data. The goal of his research is to develop an automated early prediction system of the Mild Cognitive Impairment and of the onset of Alzheimer Disease and Dementia.
Ph.D. Students
Andréa Lessa Benedet, M.Sc.
Currently, Andréa examines the impact of genetic markers of neuroinflammation on imaging outcomes of Alzheimer’s disease. She is recipient of a Ciência sem Fronteiras (CsF) scholarship.
Tharick Ali Pascoal, M.D, Neurologist
Tharick is current working with the earliest clinical manifestations, metabolic and morphologic abnormalities underlying Alzheimer’s disease pathophysiology. Tharick is specially interest in models to predict disease progression using the interface between amyloid pathology and neurodegeneration in two different cohorts (ADNI and PREVENT-AD study).
Min Su Peter Kang
Min Su (Peter) Kang is a Ph.D. candidate who is currently working on the development of translational neuroscience framework, in which investigates the effects of amyloidosis in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) spectrum using multimodal imaging techniques and fluid biomarkers. Min Su (Peter) utilizes Positron Emission Topography (PET), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and plasma to characterize the relationship between amyloidosis and various pathophysiological processes observed in AD spectrum using McGill-R-Thy1-APP transgenic rat model and Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database.
Joseph Therriault
Joseph is a PhD student working on biomarker modeling of Alzheimer’s disease, with a focus on Positron Emission Tomography. The goal of Joseph’s research is to understand what proteins become abnormal in Alzheimer’s disease before people develop symptoms, and how these proteins are related to genetics and brain function.
Camille Legault-Denis
Camille administers psychometric test for an ongoing observational study.
Meghmik Aghourian-Namagerdy
Meghmik is a PhD/Psy.D student from UQAM under the supervisor of Marc-André Bédard, PhD, who is collaborating with the Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory. Her primary focus is on imaging cholinergic depletion in Alzheimer’s disease with the [18F]FEOBV radioligand, to help improve AD diagnosis. Publications
M.Sc. Students
Peter Kunach
Peter Kunach is an M.Sc. student who is currently working on understanding the relationship between alpha-synuclein and tau pre-Formed Fibrils (pFFs) using Stereotaxic Intracerebral injections in wild-type Fischer 344 rats and the TgF344-AD rat model.
Cecile Tissot
Cécile is currently investigating a new tau PET tracer. As the present ones show off-target binding, her main project focuses on the study of pharmacodynamics and specificity of this new compound, to better picture the accumulation of tau in-vivo, in people suffering from tauopathies. She also studies neuropsychiatric symptoms in our TRIAD cohort.
Marlee Parsons
Marlee is originally from Nova Scotia and has recently completed her medical degree through McGill University. She has joined the research lab of the McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging to complete a Master of Science in Experimental Medicine over the next year. She will work under the supervision of Dr. Pedro Rosa-Neto to look at the brains of people who have variations on the usual first symptoms of Alzheimer’s Dementia, called Atypical Alzheimer’s. By seeing patterns in the groupings of proteins that accumulate in the brains of people with these differences, the researchers at the MCSA hope to further the understanding of the way this disease develops. Following this year, Marlee will continue her post-graduate medical studies in the field of Radiology.
Rim Nazar
Rim is research assistant at the McGill University Center for study in Aging (MCSA) under the supervision of Dr. Pedro Rosa-Neto and a master’s student in biomedical sciences. She has a strong interest in social and medical intervention, particularly through research and prevention.
Firoza is currently investigating possible associations between behavioral symptoms and Alzheimer’s disease pathophysiology in both healthy and clinical populations. She is completing her degree in neuroscience at McGill University.
Staff
Melissa is working as a neuroimaging research coordinator. Her primary research interest is investigating the relationship between white matter microstructure and tau pathology in neurodegeneration.
Kely is a certified physician and surgeon from Universidad Peruana Los Andes in Peru. She joined MCSA in June 2016 and received a diploma in clinical research from McGill University. Presently, she is working as a research assistant collaborating with the Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory.
Scientific Software Engineer
Research Staff
Research Assistant
Arturo uses a cryostat to cut human, rat and mouse tissue. He is also responsible for the preparation of slides for staining procedures. He is an autoradiography expert and uses different imaging markers of Alzheimer’s disease in both human and animal models.
Sarah is an undergraduate student in psychology at Université de Montréal. Following her interest in neuroscience, she joined the MCSA in September 2017 where she works as a research assistant under the supervision of Dr. Pedro Rosa-Neto.
Miloudza is completing her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Université de Montréal and is a research assistant at CrossRoads Pavillion.
Administrative Staff
Administrative Assistant
Silvana is an integral member of the TNL. She is responsible for organizing events, logistics, and all administrative tasks.
Development & Donation Office
McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging
Receptionist/Secretary,
McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging.
Medical Secretary, Alzheimer Disease Research Unit
McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging
Research Nurse
Research Nurse Coordinator
Research Nurse
Carley is presently completing Bachelor of Nursing at McGill University and is a research nurse at CrossRoads Pavillion.
Consultants
Neuroinformatics
Vladimir is currently working under the supervision of Prof. D. Louis Collins in the Image Processing Laboratory. He is involved in several large-scale projects studying morphological changes in the brain associated with development of different diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia and Autism. Previously, he was involved in the MRI Study of Normal Brain Development, otherwise known as the NIHPD project. Separately from that, he is currently developing basic image processing tools widely used in medical imaging. The software is available at github: https://github.com/BIC-MNI
Scanner technologist
Antonio Aliaga is an expert research associate in microPET acquisition and prepossessing. Antonio developed methodologies for optimizing acquisitions in resting state and wicker stimulation in mouse.
Past Visiting Scholars
Maowen Ba is currently an associate professor of neurologist in Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital affiliated to Qingdao medical university. In the MCSA, under the supervision of Professor Serge Gauthier, he conducts his clinical studies focusing on Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers for predicting the disease progression, as estimated by MRI techniques, PET techniques.)
Xiaofeng Li is a Chinese Neurologist and assistant professor from department of neurology, the second affiliated hospital of Chongqing Medical University, China. Her clinical research interest focuses on early diagnosis and differential diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. She is on a one year research fellowship (2016.05-2017.05), financially supported by Chongqing Medical University
Zhang is completing in August his fellowship at the MCSA, with important publications on biomarker changes associated with brain aging.
Kok Pin is a Neurologist from the National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. He is a visiting scholar, under the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) research training fellowship award. He is currently investigating the role of tau PET imaging in Alzheimer’s disease.
Past Undergraduate Students
As an undergraduate student studying Neuroscience at McGill University, Ryan completed a year long independent research project. At the lab, he used fMRI images to assess differences in the resting state network of the motor cortices in cognitively normal people and Alzheimer’s Disease patients.
Daliah is an undergraduate student at McGill University, doing a major in Cognitive Science and a minor in Computer Science. At the lab, she uses the Freesurfer program to edit MRI scans making sure they are fit for statistical analysis. She is also currently being trained to conduct MRI and PET scans.
Jessica is currently a McGill University undergraduate majoring in Pharmacology. At the lab, she is working with a structural neuroimaging program called Freesurfer program to edit MRI scans, making sure they are fit for statistical analysis.
Graduate Alumni
Monica is currently working on volumetric analyses to compare anatomical differences between wild-type Wistar rats and McGill-R-Thy1-APP Alzheimer’s rat model. Her project focuses on hippocampal atrophy and ventricle volume comparisons between the two groups over time in order to assess longitudinal effects.
Hanne is a PhD student at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and she will work on a research project at the TNL from January to June 2016. She will investigate certain magnetic resonance imaging techniques to predict rate of disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease. She is granted the Scientific Prize Gustave Boël – Sofina fellowship for her research stay at the TNL. She also received a Baekeland fellowship from the agency for Innovation by Science and Technology for the research she is conducting in collaboration with the UAntwerp / KULeuven spin-off companies icometrix (Leuven, Belgium) and ADx NeuroSciences (Ghent, Belgium).
Meghmik is a PhD/Psy.D student from UQAM under the supervisor of Marc-André Bédard, PhD, who is collaborating with the Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory. Her primary focus is on imaging cholinergic depletion in Alzheimer’s disease with the [18F]FEOBV radioligand, to help improve AD diagnosis.
Jonathan is a Ph.D. student working with Eliane Kobayashi, M.D., Ph.D. at the Montreal Neurological Institute and collaborating with the Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory at the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging. He studies Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) abnormalities in epilepsy patients with rare brain disorders known as malformations of cortical development. He uses radioligand [11C]ABP688 to measure the availability of mGluR5, a glutamate receptor, which mediates neuronal excitability and has been implicated in epileptogenesis.
Image Analyst / Database Administrator
Thomas is the web developer for TNL and is responsible for the creation and maintenance of numerous websites. He also creates software to make the analysis of clinical databases more accessible and easier to use for students and researchers. He is also developing GUIs to process and analyze PET, MRI, and DTI images and store them in the internal database.
Sarinporn Manitsirikul recently finished her residency in neurology. She is interested in predictive biomarkers for dementia. She investigates risk factors for dementia conversion using imaging biomarkers. She received a scholarship from the Bangkok Hospital, Thailand.
Laksanun is a neurologist from Thailand conducting research in biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease pathophysiology. She was awarded with a StoP-AD fellowship and investigates the association among imaging and CSF biomarkers on large-scale datasets, particularly the Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). She is actively involved in the CSF sampling and analysis of the StoP-AD project.
Seqian studies resting state connectivity in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and its prodromal stages, and explores its relations with other biomarkers for the disease.
Antoine’s project aims to investigate glutamatergic neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD) using [11C]ABP-688, a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) radioligand for the metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGLuR5). Antoine is a recipient of the prestigious CIHR Banting Scholarship.
Eduardo’s main interest is the dysregulation of glutamatergic homeostasis with particular emphasis on Alzheirmer’s disease, and the effect of glutamate excitotoxicity on brain functions and neurodegeneration. To pursue these goals, he is currently working on the integration of behavioral assessment, basic biochemistry and neuroimaging. Eduardo is enrolled in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Ph.D. program. He is a recipient of a Ciência sem Fronteiras (CsF) scholarship.
Maxime works on the characterization of animal models of Alzheimer’s Disease. Using a vast array of measures including Positron Emission Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cerebrospinal Fluid analysis and behavioral assessment, he aims to better define the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in transgenic animals. This serves both to further the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease itself, and to provide tools for the development of pharmacological treatments. Maxime is a recipient of a FRSQ Doctorate award.
Lucas recently completed his residency in Neurology at St. Lucas Hospital, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He is a recipient of the prestigious fellowship Emerging Leaders of Americas Program (ELAP). Lucas’ project aims to characterize imaging biomarkers in atypical presentations of dementia.
Jared developed advanced analytical pipelines for analysis of brain structure and function using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Jared developed a new methodology to extract structural connectivity using Diffusion Tensor imaging. He is currently at the SUNY Downstate Medical school, Brooklyn NY.
Marina is a clinical neurologist from Brazil. She participated in the StoP-AD project performing clinical assessments and CSF sampling. She was awarded with a StoP-AD fellowship. She also conducted research using the ADNI database to investigate the correlations between measures of cognitive impairment and amyloid deposition and cerebral glucose metabolism.
Student Research Assistant
Using structural MR and PET imaging, Sara is exploring the relationship between cortical thickness and various biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease. She is also involved in maintaining and updating multi-modal data downloaded from the ADNI database.
During her time at TNL, Dorothee was engaged on a research project, funded by the Alzheimer’s Association (USA), focusing on the use of novel PET and MRI techniques in order to investigate neurological changes found in individuals at high risk of Alzheimer Disease (AD). More specifically, her research activities addressed the relationships between neuropsychological performances of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and the integrity of grey and white matters, as estimated by advanced MRI techniques (eg. Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Voxel Based Morphometry…)
Ishan was co-supervised by Dr. N. P. Vasavan Nair and investigated the impact of yoga breathing (pranayama) and meditation on brain aging using structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). He is the recipient of the 2015 Samuel B. Hanser Visionary Award from Kripalu’s Institute for Extraordinary Living to support this project.
Liyong Wu is a behavioral neurologist. He conducted his postdoctoral studies focusing on multiparametric analysis of Alzheimer’s disease imaging biomarkers, and was awarded with the Pfizer PDF fellowship. Liyong is currently an assistant professor at the China National laboratory for Neurodegenerative Diseases (CNLND), Capital National University. Liyong’s fellowship in Montreal fostered collaboration between China and Canada. TNL and CNLND are part of a CIHR/NSFC funded project entitled “Biomarker Profile of Early Onset Familial Alzheimer’s Disease”, which searches for biomarkers of preclinical AD.
Luciano Minuzzi designed and implemented autoradiography techniques capable of quantifying mGLUR5 receptors in the human and rodent brain. Luciano is an assistant professor of Psychiatry at McMaster’s University, Canada.
David Elmenhost came as a visiting scientist. He developed methods for quantification on in vivo and in vitro neuroreceptors for mGLUR5 using [11C]ABP688. David Elmenhost is currently a scientist at Julich Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM).
Thiago is a psychiatrist interested in functional and structural segmentation of the cingulate cortex and its potential clinical applications. He received training on the segmentation of the cingulate cortex at TNL. He is currently a MSc candidate at the University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, Brazil (UFCSPA) under the supervision of Dr. Ygor Arzeno Ferrao M.D PhD.
Betteke van Noort carried out the experimental part of her MSc thesis at TNL. She studied association between [11C]ABP688 binding and [18F]FDG in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. She is currently a PhD student at Universität Potsdam, CHARITÉ – UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN, CVK, Klinik für Psychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie des Kindes- und Jugendalters, Berlin.
Ricardo Sode made substantial contributions on fMRI and PET methodologies in the TNL laboratory. He is Professor of the School of Medicine at Pontifical University of Rio Grande do Sul (Radiology section) and neuroradiologist at the Brain Institute in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Past International Summer Students
Alexandre Pinault worked on the imaging of VLUT3 mouse in our laboratory. He is currently a PhD student in Jean-Pierre Hornung lab in Switzerland, working on development of brain / anxiety (hippocampus) and how “NR2B and sexual hormones modulate the morphologic phenotype of 5-HT1A deficient mice.
Donghyeon Kim is a M.Sc. GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology) under supervision of Prof. Hyoung-Ihl Kim, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST). Donghyeon came to our laboratory to conduct part of his research training in microPET analysis.
Aurore is a French student from Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC) Paris VI who came to Montreal for 7 months as part of her MSc thesis. She was working in Dr Cecilia Flores’ laboratory on a project studying the role of guidance cue Netrin 1 receptor, dcc. One aspect of her project was to assess whether mice heterozygous for dcc exhibited changes in mPFC volume and structure compared to WT littermates. She conducted mPFC volumetries at TNL. She is a Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
Carmen is an undergraduate student from Amsterdam University College (AUC) who came to TNL for 2 months in order to work on her bachelor thesis. Her project was to determine the differences in amyloid deposition between the brain of humans with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and transgenic rat models of AD using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). She is a Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
Daniel worked on a research project at the TNL from October 2012 to May 2013. He collected data at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and used the ADNI database to investigate the correlation between cerebral glucose metabolism and amyloid burden in typical AD patients and controls. Daniel is currently working on a master’s degree at Utrecht University.